Were England good, lucky, or a bit of both ?

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Absolute spot on write up. I'm a huge believer in stats. It tells you your progress and reading ours were no better than any other England team.
When your centre Half's had more touches in the box than any other player and your player of the tournament is a defender or keeper you know you've got problems. Take read I found it bang on the only thing that was coming home was the team before the final:-World Cup 2018: Were England good, lucky, or a bit of both?

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Things I picked up on
Ali never dribbled with the ball and zero assists the same assists as Kane

Sterling had 1 shot on goal in the whole tournament same as Loftus-Cheek who played 1/2 as many minutes and Wellbeck who played for a full 11 minutes
It's no coincidence that Kane and Ali stunk the place out in the last Euros. For us to move forward the likes of Ali, Kane, Sterling need to drastically improve when wearing an England shirt.

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I thought we did better than was expected from a young team with not much international experience, could do with some better players, Kane last 2 games never showed up but is on the for the golden boot, Sterling just runs around like a blue ass fly but cannot score, he needs to pass the ball no pass more as he never does, we can only get better in the euros in 2yrs time.
People thought we would not make it into the WC, then it was we would not make it out of the group, then beat teams that we did beat and so on
We did better than Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Italy, Holland, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and many more.

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Were did I say I'm not proud ffs ???, of course I am. Becauae someone pointed out facts and stats doesn't mean he's not proud either.

ASometimes you need to take the rose tinted glasses off and look at the facts, and is Southgate the saviour of English football.Kane scored 3 pens and a jammy deflected goal. As soon as we met decent sides Belgium Croatia we lost. I thought Loftis-Cheek was a far better option than Ali who's been nursing a thigh injury for 12 months.

Yes we made semis but I'm sure if we had of won our group Brazil would have dumped us faster than a paid prostitute.
It's simple, some people aren't disappointed and are happy to have a celebrate losing and home have a coming party for been 4th. That's also part of the problem been happy and celebrate losing.

I'll take bets all day long we don't win Euros 2020 unless we start to actually play football and dump the Love Train.
Once Italy Holland and Spain re group there's more chance Donald Trump is next England manager

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I'm not arguing about who's proud who's not I mearly started a post which confirms my thoughts on what I saw.

If you honestly think England played well bar playing the pub side Panama you wanna start watchiing some other sport
@j.noodles when you reply to my post with a :
PS I`m Maltese are more proud of England than a lot of English are...

I don't need be Sherlock to wonder were your pointing your finger when you were typing that comment... not quite Carling my friend.

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I'm not arguing about who's proud who's not I mearly started a post which confirms my thoughts on what I saw.

If you honestly think England played well bar playing the pub side Panama you wanna start watchiing some other sport
@j.noodles when you reply to my post with a :PS I`m Maltese are more proud of England than a lot of English are...

I don't need be Sherlock to wonder were your pointing your finger when you were typing that comment... not quite Carling my friend.

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My thoughts are this.
England are not far from being a side, that could compete for titles, they just need 3 world beaters to add to what they currently have.
I hear that Phil Foden and Ryan Sessegnon, could be 2 of them from what I have seen James Maddison could be the 3rd.
They performed adequately at this world cup, and the draw was very kind to them.
We found out that Trippier is a better international player than club player, and that he can take a decent corner and free kick.
We have also discovered that it doesn't matter how much running you do off the ball, if that doesn't lead to goals all you are doing is wasting energy and losing weight.
I enjoyed watching and I hope that they beat Belgium and finish 3rd

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@langland your not far off. If you remember some years back the Germans had a crisis so they invested millions in thier youth football.

Their sussesful u21 2009 European winning side (beat England 4-0) 6 from that German u21 winning team went on and played in the 2014 world cup finals and some still do..

When Southgate took over not one player from the 2009 side was still in the England frame. You might say well that 7 years but if there 19-20-21 years old they'd be in thier prime for today's World Cup just like Croatia who had quite a few older experienced players and 1 who dumped us out

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As I said Belgium showed us not once but twice. As for the u19's Euro's ? non from Utd, Arsenal, and the so called better academy's like Everton or Southampton ? zero. There's 1 from City 1 Liverpool 1 Spurs 3 Chelsea who are all out on loan.
The top six clubs are simply not interested raising the standard of English's /British football players it's not their concern. Take Luke Shaw, for Southampton he was outstanding. Utd then go and pay around £30 million. He'd been through the system playing at all age groups for England from u16's to u21 level.
Step up Mourinho who now allow's personal likes / dislikes of players cloud his judgement ( Pogba been another) and totally demoralises Shaw. One game he shouted that much at Shaw telling him to bomb forward he eventually subbed him for Young. They then put the stats up on MOTD and he actually had more touches than Young, covered more ground and went forward more Young got no tongue lashing simply because he likes him.
Prem managers don't give a flyer hence our younger players don't don't get blooded enough in the Prem. Only 3 players from the U21's squad of 2013 were in the England squad for the 2018 World Cup were as Germany had 7 ex U21 players on the pitch when they won it in 2014.

As long as the Prem remains all about money then we've absolutely no chance of winning anything.